


Patience

by ladysisyphus



Series: Wolves [23]
Category: Fargo (2014)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-26
Updated: 2014-09-26
Packaged: 2018-02-18 20:57:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2361953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladysisyphus/pseuds/ladysisyphus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ice fishing, Numbers reflected as he burrowed deeper into the collar of his coat, was the closest he'd probably ever get to understanding what it was like to be deaf.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Patience

Ice fishing, Numbers reflected as he burrowed deeper into the collar of his coat, was the closest he'd probably ever get to understanding what it was like to be deaf. There was a bright brilliant stillness to everything, a calm so near-paralytic that it made Numbers wonder if this was what it was like to live in a snow globe, settled and self-contained. The chill windless air didn't so much as ruffle the hairs on his sleeves, and the birds high above said nothing as they traced great lazy circles across the sky. Even the white clouds that escaped his lips with every breath did so without audible comment. 

He could shout, but what would it accomplish? Besides, it'd frighten the fish. 

He couldn't even shout at Wrench, because the thick gloves that kept his hands from freezing and falling off all but gagged him. Sure, he could get basic gestures down, and context counted for a lot, but it wasn't as though they could just sit there and _chat_. As an experiment, Numbers tried to make a letter T with his right hand. It came out somewhere between S and O. 

When he looked up again, Wrench was smiling from across the fresh-bored hole. He gestured with his left hand from his nose to his right hand, the latter of which held his pole steady. Numbers shook his head, unable to read, and Wrench repeated the gesture, this time articulating despite his own heavy gloves that he was extending two fingers on each hand. Oh, was Numbers having fun? 

The odd thing was, he _was_. Maybe it wasn't his idea of the perfect afternoon, and he surely would never have thought of it as an activity on his own, but now he was here, despite all good sense and reason, he was actually enjoying himself. 

Silence wasn't a thing Numbers had grown up knowing; it was something he'd had to learn on his own. It had come so unnaturally to him he'd thought he hated it, and he'd filled all the subsequent gaps in his life with noise. Demons lived in the silences, the same ones he'd spent his whole life trying hard not to believe in. He'd once thought he might be fine under even the fiercest forms of torture, but two weeks alone in a box and he'd be spilling anything he knew to anyone who'd listen just so he didn't have to be alone with his own mind anymore. Maybe he was a monster, but the things monsters were afraid of lived in the quiet.

The first time Wrench had offered him the use of the car radio, Numbers had barely a week of fingerspelling under his belt, long enough to know that he wasn't very good at it _and_ that it wasn't very good for communication. But it was enough to get by with basic requests, such that Wrench could point to the car radio, point to Numbers, sign 'want', and spell O-N.

He'd surprised himself by saying that he didn't, and surprised himself even more by meaning it.

Fun, yes, Numbers signed, then pointed to the empty steel bucket by Wrench's feet. But I hope you have other dinner ideas.

Wrench's smile broadened into a grin. He spelled slowly, articulating through heavy gloves: P-A-T-I-E-N-C-E.

 _You mean what doctors have that I don't have?_ thought Numbers, recalling the number of times one relative of his or another had pulled that one out to shame his younger self's unwillingness to wait. It had been a family joke right up until the moment it hadn't been. He let the whole train of thought go, though. Puns died the moment someone tried explaining them. 

He was still thinking of a witty comeback when he felt his line jerk.

~*~

He couldn't say anything; he was too busy burying his nose in the sleeve of his sweater. Wrench just rolled his eyes as he drew back the hooked edge of his knife, the part that looked like a hawk's beak, along the fish's white belly from its gills to its tail, exposing its shiny, stinking red-purple guts. That was plenty; he was going to wait outside.

The little rented cabin wasn't much, but it had two beds and a deep sink, and Wrench had said it was better than cleaning the fish at home. From the way that wet, bloody smell lingered even outside, Numbers didn't have trouble imagining why. Years of butchered fish must have soaked it right into the boards. The only way to get that out would be to burn the place down, and he'd rather not. There'd been a deposit and everything.

The late-season snow had begun to thaw and disappear, but even the smallest drifts still sunk him in up to his knees. That had been a thing he'd had to learn about North Dakota. Growing up, he'd seen piles waist-high get shoveled away and browned with salt and sludge after mere hours, and even a well-built snowman could barely have hoped to last the week. Urban winter was its own thing; the cold stayed, far beyond any mortal ability to banish, but human hands could and did clear the snowy streets and sidewalks. At worst, he'd come home with his shoes caked with white road salt but otherwise dry. Snow days were a rarity. The Almighty had given men the brains to built plows, and all God's people had places to go and shit to do.

To let winter linger so untouched like this was somewhere between a luxury and an admission that there were forces in the universe beyond control. Numbers stuffed his bare hands deeper into his pockets; he'd taken off his gloves when they'd gone inside on the foolish pretense that he might be some help with the cleaning. He wished he still smoked, mostly for something to do.

It couldn't have been too far into the afternoon, but the sun had already slipped behind the trees and taken its warmth with it. Already the shadows had started to cover their tracks, and from this angle he could only see the distant ice hole they'd made because he knew where to look. The auger leaned up against the cabin wall; Numbers had almost said something about finding a more secure place to store it when he'd realized that any potential thief would have needed to be Wrench-sized to even begin to haul it away, and the only other fisher-types he'd caught even a glimpse of had been old men, and even those at a distance. That was the problem with being a criminal: it was hard sometimes to stop assuming everyone else was too.

He stood there and watched the cloudless sky dim, and just as the blue began to give way to the slightest edge of pink, he heard the cabin door swing open behind him. He turned around and saw Wrench come out, frown, and shake his sweater until all the accumulated scales showered loose around him. Numbers raised an eyebrow: Finished?

Beautiful, clean fish, Wrench promised him, then dusted his hands back and forth until a last few shimmery scales fell free. Are you ready to cook?

Back inside the cabin, Numbers took off his boots and knocked the snow off their tread before resting them by the cabin's potbellied stove. As he stood, Wrench reached for him as though to kiss him, and Numbers pulled back. Wrench's previously pleasant expression fell: What?

Wash your hands! signed Numbers. Don't touch me with fish-hands!

For a moment, Wrench looked crushed -- and then he lifted his hands again and began to stalk toward Numbers with a slow, wooden stride, looking like nothing so much as a silent-movie monster. Numbers yelped and staggered back, but the beds he'd pushed together were too close behind, such that the edge of one caught his calves, sending him sprawling back. The squeaky springs groaned under his sudden weight, and Wrench laughed as loudly as he ever did, a careless, breathless sound.

Supper was fashionably late.

~*~

He could tell Wrench was awake by the pace of his breathing against the back of Numbers' neck, the way it hadn't settled down into the slow, easy rhythms of sleep just yet. The moon in the clear sky shone a through the cabin's few windows, but its half-face lit little more than the suggestions of objects. Inside was otherwise dark.

Wrench tended to leave a light on somewhere when he slept -- always the bathroom light when they were in motels, and either the television or the hallway light, depending on whose apartment they were at that night -- and Numbers had been irritated with it at first, then had come to accept it. He didn't even think it had anything to do with being deaf, necessarily; it was just what Wrench did, like topping off the tank or putting syrup on fried chicken. Not everything that happened needed to be part of some grand design.

Numbers took the hand Wrench had left draped over his waist, holding it in both of his. He thought for a second, then clumsily forced Wrench's fingers into the closest approximation of letters he could: G-O-T-O-S-L-E-E-P.

That got another low chuckle from behind him. Other deaf people were _loud_ , Wrench had informed him once, not too many months into their acquaintance, and when Numbers had expressed skepticism at the idea, Wrench had told him to keep track for the next ten minutes of all the noises Numbers made _or_ went out of his way not to make. After just two, Numbers had conceded the point. He hadn't asked at the time why it was, then, that Wrench himself barely made a stomp or a sneeze; by now, he didn't need to.

T-I-R-E-D?, asked Numbers, fumbling with each letter as he pushed and pulled Wrench's fingers into their various places, then traced a question mark on his palm. It was the world's most painfully slow method of communication, but it made Wrench laugh, and they were close and warm and comfortable, so it wasn't all bad.

Wrench nodded, ruffling the back of Numbers' hair with his nose as he did. There was a small pause, after which Wrench took his hand and placed it in Numbers', then formed letters one by one, letting Numbers read each by touch and nod when he was ready for the next: T-H-I-N-K-I-N-G.

When Wrench's fingers no longer moved on their own, Numbers took control of them again: W-H-A-T?

Y-O-U.

No one in the world would ever have accused him of being a soft touch, but Numbers was still glad the dark was there to cover his expression. M-E?

Wrench nodded again, then pressed a kiss into Numbers' hair, just behind his ear. F-I-S-H-H-A-N-D-S.

Numbers elbowed Wrench kindly in the gut, which didn't so much as dent Wrench's impressive abdominal muscles and just made Wrench laugh. It had been hard for Numbers to explain quite why he liked those noises so much, the rare moments when he alone got to hear what Wrench tried so hard every waking moment to hold back -- especially since Wrench lived under the apparent impression that he could not utter a sound without convincing everyone in the vicinity that he was an idiot. When a thing you liked best about someone was the thing they liked least, it was better to say nothing at all.

So Numbers pushed all of Wrench's fingers into a fist, then held the others down while he pried the middle one upward, to Wrench's audible delight. It _was_ an ungainly sort of laugh, a bit of a bray, but Numbers would take that information to his grave. And really, it could have sounded like anything, so long as it had been Wrench's and it had been for him.


End file.
